Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to selling an item on a virtual marketplace. More specifically, the present invention is a method of selling an item at an instantaneous price that occurs in accordance to a predetermined time interval during the process of a sale.
2. Description of Related Art
Methods are known where a buyer may initiate a “reverse auction” by requesting offers from sellers, so sellers compete, and the buyer obtains the desired service or product at the lowest price. However, these methods often require a seller to first consider “interacting variables” before providing a price. These interacting variables may include the seller's revenue target, profit target, market share target, inventory status, discount rates from its own suppliers, promotion, pricing forecasts from historic market data, competition from other sellers, and the profile of potential buyers. Thus, the process is not fully automated, since many variables still need to be determined before an agreement is reached between the buyer and the seller. Also, the sellers must submit one or more quotes to the buyer, who needs to evaluate these before deciding.
Another disadvantage with existing methods is that there is generally no competition between the sellers and potential buyers for the services and products requested. Thus, sellers may be discouraged to participate in such a process, since a single buyer may be demanding an unreasonably low price, or the seller's chances of completing a transaction are relatively low. In addition, existing methods only allow the buyer to see the best price that the engine seller will offer.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method of selling an item via a virtual marketplace, which is fully automated in that the sellers do not need to submit quotes to the potential buyers. There is also a need for a method that allows multiple buyers to participate to create competition between buyers for goods or services, so that sellers are not discouraged from participating in the process by a single buyer. In addition, there is a need for a method where buyers will be in the same virtual market place online at the same time, see actual real-time price changes, and compete with each other, where a buyer selects the price he is willing to pay for a good or service in light of the trade-offs of either buying sooner at a relatively higher price to ensure that he obtains the good or service, or waiting for the price to go lower and risk that another buyer may purchase the particular goods or services. Furthermore, there is a need for a method where multiple stock of items may be marketed together, to allow multiple different items to be sold on the same platform, and to allow deals to be made between commercial retailers, individual sellers, and buyers online. Moreover, there is a need for a method where the potential buyers are aware of the ceiling price and the floor price prior to the sales transaction with the knowledge that the price can only decrease to facilitate buyer competition and reduce the amount of time required to sell an item. The method described in this patent application fulfills at least one of these needs or creates other utility.